A. A. Milne Quotes

150 Sourced Quotes

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

A. A. Milne
I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.

A. A. Milne
Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

A. A. Milne
Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.

A. A. Milne
On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those.

A. A. Milne
You gave me Christopher Robin, and then You breathed new life in Pooh. Whatever of each has left my pen Goes homing back to you. My book is ready, and comes to greet The mother it longs to see — It would be my present to you, my sweet, If it weren't your gift to me.

A. A. Milne
I might have known, said Eeyore. After all, one can't complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!'. The Social Round. Always something going on.

A. A. Milne
"How long does getting thin take?" Pooh asked anxiously.

A. A. Milne
"Hello Rabbit, is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't", said Rabbit, "and see what happens."

A. A. Milne
Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain." "I know," said Pooh humbly.

A. A. Milne
'Pathetic,' he [Eeyore] said. 'That's what it is. Pathetic.'

A. A. Milne
Because my spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

A. A. Milne
It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.

A. A. Milne
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
Isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

A. A. Milne
We can't all and some of us don't. That's all there is to it.

A. A. Milne
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace—
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
'A soldier's life is terrible hard,'
Says Alice.

A. A. Milne
"Shall I look too?" said Pooh, who was beginning to feel a little eleven o'clockish. And he found a small tin of condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers didn't like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and went with it to see that nobody interrupted it.

A. A. Milne
When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.

A. A. Milne
The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

A. A. Milne
Owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could—

A. A. Milne
And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count.

A. A. Milne
Eeyore was saying to himself, 'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.'

A. A. Milne
Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.

A. A. Milne
"I'm not going to do nothing anymore."
"Never again?"
"Well, not so much. They don't let you."

A. A. Milne
When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

A. A. Milne
He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.

A. A. Milne
I suppose that by this time they had finished their dressing. Roger Scurvilegs tells us nothing on such important matters; no doubt from modesty. "Next morning they rose," he says, and disappoints us of a picture of Udo brushing his hair.

A. A. Milne
And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore shook his head from side to side. "Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time." "Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at you.

A. A. Milne
"They wanted to come in after the pounds", explained Pooh, "so I let them. It's the best way to write poetry, letting things come".

A. A. Milne
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

A. A. Milne